


and when death brings his cold despair?

by dreadfulbeauties



Category: Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe, Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Gore, Worms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24709540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadfulbeauties/pseuds/dreadfulbeauties
Summary: Faust knows who engineers his nightmares.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	and when death brings his cold despair?

They begin by wrapping Faust up in a spotless white sheett—how tragic, he overhears, that such a promising and intelligent doctor died. But he is not dead, simply left cold and stiff while his “corpse” is prepared for burial. He wants to scream for help; I am alive, he wants to say, and I need to get away. But he cannot so much as lift a finger, and he is lowered into a box and left in the ground.

Faust is alive. He can hear his own breathing so deafening in the quiet of the coffin. He can move once more beneath the freshly shoveled dirt, and pounds his fists against the wooden lid. Alas, his coffin is sealed shut.

“Let me out!” He pleads. “I’m not dead!”

That’s when he feels something twitching beneath his skin.

He can’t see a thing in the dark of his coffin. But he can feel things squirming just beneath the topmost layer of skin on his hand. And on his leg. And around his nose and cheeks. _Worms._

Mephistopheles is behind this, Faust knows. He knows not how he ended up here. But he needs to get out now.

Worms begin to break free of his skin, squirming all over his clothes. He canm feel the welts erupting on his skin, feel them escaping his nostrils and crawling inside and all over him. They twist paths over decaying flesh, trailing faint blood wherever they pop out. He can feel them squirming around deep in his stomach, poking their way through the muscle tissue and swimming through the thin protective acid.

Faust can feel them eating away at the soft tissue from his eyes, he can feel himself decaying. Worms, squirming in and out as his face collapses in on itself and his head of brown hair is rendered bare of anything save for a few straggly gray hair. His skin’s sagging against his own bones—

“I’m sorry.”

The worms vanish when he speaks. Mephistopheles regards him, huddled up on the bed. Though he says nothing, Faust knows what he is thinking: What a pathetic being he’s with, he must think, rendered helpless and incapable of listening to me.

“It would be in your best interests to heed my advice, Herr Doctor.” His voice is warm, a welcome sound after the silence of being trapped in a coffin. “I certainly wouldn’t want to cause you more… grievances.”

When Faust speaks at last his voice is hoarse, rendered scratchy by the vision of being buried alive and eaten.

“I’ll listen, Mephistopheles. I will.”

Mephistopheles smiles in the dimmed room. His smile is cat-like, revealing the pointed teeth and forked tongue inside his mouth.

“I knew you would.”

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to the hearse song as i wrote this. also i have nightmares about being buried alive and eaten by worms. not pleasant at all!
> 
> but anyways, thank you for reading this. stay safe and take care <3


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